"What was the use of going to the window, when you knew she was dead?'' "I don't know. She looked just as if she was alive. The other time, I was kneeling down on the rug, making your fire burn up. She passed straight before me."

"Oh, nonsense! She would have set fire to her clothes.'

Still looked injured, but quietly persisted

"She did, ma'am. She passed straight between me and the fire.

"How could she do that? Really, Still, for a sensible young woman, you are very full of fancies."

"It was not a fancy, either of the times, ma'am. I did see her, I did, indeed. I hope you will believe me."

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'Yes; I quite believe that you think you saw Mrs. X--. You may have your sister to sleep with you.”

Now it is not a pleasant thing for any man, still less for one of my profession, to confess that he has felt "creepy" on account of certain inexplicable sounds. But, as this is a perfectly true account, I am compelled to acknowledge that it happened to me again and again, during the time of my dwelling in the Old Lodge. And I also declare that my wife and I were perfectly well in health, and that we had never before been the victims of similar terrors. Further more though we spoke of the noises, we, at first, abstained from mentioning our sensations to each other.

After an hour's sleep, I would be aroused, as if at the command of some person, unseen indeed, but certainly in the room. Then a small something, say a marble, would be gently dropped, more than once, on the carpet, close at my bedside; sometimes on the floorcloth, just outside the open door. Then the marble would be gently rolled on the boards of the room, and up against the skirting board.

It was an immense relief when, one

"The chest of drawers was dragged over the floor," she replied. “I am thankful you spoke to me, for I have for some time been trying to wake you, but was not allowed. In fact, I have been kept perfectly motionless.'

I had heard precisely the same sound, yet the drawers did not appear to have been actually moved. The sounds were so distinct that we always connected them with some special article. Now, it was a chair, or the towelhorse, that was moved. Now, it was the loud snapping of a thick stick in the hall. Now, it was a violent blow on the hall table, struck as if with my own walking-stick, which I remembered to have left there, and which I found there in the morning. Once, the heaviest book on my writing table appeared to be dropped, as if from the height of a man, on the floor-cloth in the hall. Then a smaller one. I always myself shut the doors of the rooms leading into the hall.

Of course, I tried in every way to account for the mystery; but, after a time, I could only resign myself to lie awake and wonder. The nights were bitterly cold. On one occasion, when there had been a persistent dropping of nuts in a corner of the room, I jumped. up, in desperation, and held the light close to the spot. In a second, the sound was behind me. I whisked round, but-tapping to right of me, tapping to left of me, tapping in every direction, without a second's intermis-sion. No sooner did I look toward one spot than the dropping of nuts was at the other end of the room. It was as if some mischievous elf were enjoying himself at my expense.

Our boys had gone to spend a day or two with some friends; and their mother, not liking the look of the empty room, had closed the door in passing; giving it a push, to make sure that it was fast. That night, we heard the

door shut with a tremendous bang. Even had it been left open, there was no wind to move it.

Another night, when we had been awoke in the usual way, there was an agreeable variety in the entertainment. A delicate, flute-like sound proceeded from the closed dining-room. Again and again, a distinct and long-sustained musical note, as of some small pipe. Then the fifth of that note, then the octave, repeated many times; then the seventh and octave, over and over again. We were greatly puzzled. piano was not in that room. And the sound certainly suggested a wind instrument of sweet tone.

The

I went down early next morning, and found, to my surprise, a concertina lying on a table. I lifted the handle, and there came forth a long-drawn note, the very note I had heard in the night. My wife called out to me from up stairs, "That's it! that's it! What is it ?”’ Without attempting to disentangle her speech, I held up the concertina.

"Oh! that is Phil's. He must have left it behind. But it was the very note; there is no doubt of it.'

We locked the thing up in its box, and put it inside a bookcase; and next night we were treated to a repetition of the musical notes, only muffled.

It was not only during the night that the noises were heard. For instance I was reading by the fading afternoon light, when a chair on the other side of the room seemed to be moved from its place, so that I instinctively turned my head to see who had entered the room. Again, I was about to go down the cellar steps, in the afternoon, when I heard a heavy pickling pan dragged along the -stone floor below. I quite thought some one was down there; but, as usual, there was no one to be seen, and the pan was in its place.

At eleven o'clock A.M., my wife and Still were on the landing. The girl was telling her mistress that she had heard Mrs. X's voice the evening before. Her mistress told her that she was giving way to fancies.

་་

But Mary Jones heard it too.

She

had just brought in the eggs, and stood listening to the singing in the drawing room. Then I heard Mrs. X-'s angry voice again, on the stairs, and Mary said, 'Who's shouting?' I said I didn't know, and she said, 'It must be the missis. Lor! how angry she is to holler like that. Doesn't she like 'em to sing?'"'

"In an old house like this," began my wife, "there may be many noises caused by—"

Suddenly, a noise, as if a shower of small pieces of the ceiling came down sharply on the floor-cloth, caused mistress and maid to start back in affright, and involuntarily to look up. There was not a crack to be seen. Then the two pairs of eyes searched the floor in every direction, their owners cautiously standing within the shelter of two dour ways. Not a morsel of any kind could they discover.

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What was that, ma'am?” inquired Stillwater, fixing her sleepy gaze on her mistress.

"I cannot tell," was the only reply that occurred to that intelligent lady.

One morning the post brought me orders to move on." Instead of grumbling, I hailed them with delight. For we seldom got a decent night's rest, and my wife's nerves were beginning to be weakened by the constant strain upon them.

The Old Lodge had been for years in the charge of Mrs. X——, who had borne the character of highly respectable old lady, with the drawbacks of being somewhat misanthropical and very avaricious.

I am perfectly aware of the ridicule with which stories of this nature are generally received. I can only repeat that I have related an absolutely true experience, for which I am utterly unable to account. I have no theory on the subject. I have always felt a strong distaste for so-called Spiritualism. I perceive the inconsequence and even childishness of my story; and yet it will always remain, to the story-teller, a serious Fact.-Macmillan's Magazine.

tilized from the pollen of other individuals of the same species. Self-sufficiency, so far from conferring an advantage on the life which can boast of it, appears to be brought into existence only for the sake of marking the disadvantage at which it compares with those more generous forms of life which are at once precarious and more elaborate and rich. The efforts of self-sufficiency which nature makes in the lower stages of her production, she seems to make only to brand with a sort of bad mark, as indicative of a poor kind of experiment, easy to achieve, but achieved only to be abandoned. And the fault in this self-sufficiency seems to be precisely its hide-bound character, the absence of all provision for variety of vital elements, for the concurrence of different forms of experience, for the stimulus of need, for the sting of want. Those forms of life which have in them the elements of narrow completeness, seem always to be inert forms, condemned to comparative sterility. The animalcules which are half kitchen-garden, and the kitchen-gardens which are half animalcules, are very dead-alive affairs, without any go-aheadness in them. They are, indeed, in this respect very like village communities which strenuously resist the invasion of the rest of the world, or insular-minded races which brand all dependence on the foreigner" as a sort of slur upon their dignity and safety. If the maxim "Nothing venture, nothing have," is applicable to the tempers of men, it is still more applicable, apparently, to the providence of nature. The organizations-both vegetable and animal -which show most capacities for development are the organizations which are matured and sharpened by running the gauntlet against all sorts of possible failures. Many of them, no doubt, succumb to the results of failure, but the descendants of those which do not, are improved in the next generation by their parentage from the best specimens of the species; and so natural selection" elaborates a higher form out of the sifting process to which the lower forms have been submitted. That the self-sufficient forms of organization do not admit of this sifting, is the very

reason why they remain stamped with the brand of unprogressiveness.

So far, we suppose, we have been accepting and enunciating what would be called approved Darwinian principles. But now, let us ask to what we ought to ascribe this apparent restlessness in nature, which seems so discontented with the self-sufficient forms of life that they are only invented to be left on the lowest platform of existence, as a kind of warning against the principle of selfsufficiency itself? Apart from mind and plan, apart from a purpose that transcends all these hide-bound self-sufficiencies, there seems no reason at all why the self-sufficient forms of life should not have had it all their own way, and filled the world with stagnant, inert, unprogressive forms of life. And if, on the other hand, evolution were purely mechanical and automatic, why do selfsufficient species-like those protozoa with vegetable streaks in them-which seem to require no revolution and admit of no evolution, exist at all? If selfsufficiency is once produced in nature, why is it superseded, unless there be in the very heart of the cause which produced it a purpose of superseding it, and of exhibiting it as the lowest possible stage of finite life? Self-sufficiency certainly does not seem in any way suited to be even a link in an ever-extending chain. On the contrary, it seems suited at best to be the final link in the chain, if it be a link at all, and not rather an armor-plated whole, inaccessible to almost all external influence. That the plan of the universe should include self-sufficient creatures, and self-sufficient creatures branded as vastly inferior to creatures dependent on all sorts of risks and chances, is surely a most significant hint to us, as to how the plan of the universe ought to be interpreted. This apparent impatience of nature-if we are to use that non-committal term-of the self-sufficiency which she had herself produced and exhibited to us, is surely an impatience which cannot in any sense be disjoined from foresight and purpose. which drives on the development of life to higher forms, forms of more elaborate dependence on other forms, forms that imply correlation with what is dis

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